Mobile computing devices, such as smart phones, tablet computers and other small computing devices, are commonly primarily battery operated and have limited resources, in comparison to typical desktop or laptop computing devices that are not primarily battery powered. Processors in such devices may have limited instruction sets, limited memory, limited processing speed, limited input/output capability and the like, compared to their line-powered counterparts. In some uses, such mobile computing devices are connected to yet other devices, such as display devices, to provide the user with a better user experience. However, connecting multiple displays or other external input and output devices to a mobile computing device can present battery power management challenges and other resource management challenges to the operating system.